Board Tentatively Approves 2 9th-grade Centers

Two temporary campuses for ninth-graders were tentatively approved Friday as the Orange County School Board outlined new zones for secondary schools during a five-hour workshop.

Parents strongly opposed the ninth-grade centers when proposed in March but began to come around in recent days to the staff's position that they were needed to ease crowding at Winter Park and Colonial high schools.

The centers -- one at Winter Park Junior High and the other to be built near Dean Road and State Road 50 -- would be operated no more than two years, until another high school is built in east Orange, said Superintendent James Schott.

Board member Kattie Adams offered the strongest support for ninth-grade centers, saying freshmen would get attention that they often miss when competing with older students.

''In a few years we may wonder whether it might not be a good idea for the entire county,'' Adams said.

Board Chairwoman Iris Tapley said she supported centers on the condition that the students get the same opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities as students in the regular schools.

Schott said all of the academic and extra-curricular needs of the ninth- graders in centers would be met.

Many Winter Park parents supported the campuses on the condition that students at Glenridge Junior High not be rezoned into Howard Junior High, said Mike Mekdeci, head of the board's planning team. The board left the Glenridge zone intact.

The new junior high and high school boundaries, still subject to change, are scheduled for adoption during a public hearing on May 27. Elementary school zones, which the board outlined on April 10, will be adopted after a May 13 hearing.

As part of its plan for secondary school zones, the board decided to let high school seniors choose to stay in their schools or be transferred when new zones are implemented.

Zones for all secondary schools and most elementaries will be implemented in 1987 when the district converts its junior high schools to middle schools. Middle schools will serve sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders. Ninth-graders will move into the high schools. New zones for Spring Lake Elementary, Wheatley Elementary and the new Clarcona Elementary will be implemented this fall.

Board members considered allowing this year's sixth-graders to transfer this fall instead of next because parents complained that some students would attend four schools in four years as a result of rezoning and the switch to middle schools.

But the board decided against the early transfer after staff members said that seventh-grade programs at some schools could be wiped out as a result. Some board members argued that students could cope with the changes because they would be transferred along with their classmates.

The board also expanded the zone for Jones High School in Orlando, a move advocated by board member Kattie Adams to boost the school's sagging enrollment and make it possible for the school to offer a wider range of courses. Adams said the Jones enrollment, now about 800, would climb to about 1,350 in 1987, including the ninth-grade class.

Jones' enrollment would have surpassed 1,400 under transfers approved at one point in the meeting, but the numbers were reduced at the urging of Schott and Mekdeci.

After much debate, the board transferred about 80 Jones students to Oak Ridge High to make that school about 50 to 60 students under capacity.

If the district allowed too many vacancies at Oak Ridge while allowing Jones to be more than 400 students over capacity, the state could block the new high school in east Orange, Schott said. The state is set to survey enrollments in June to decide whether another school is justified.

''Our chances of getting that new high school on the east side are greatly jeopardized by being under capacity at Oak Ridge,'' Schott said.